#vcd

Alina Scratch Pixel Art 25-10-18

Sophie

"Me and Thee" is the kind of phenomenon that lingers long after the credits roll.

After seeing the One Word clip from the finale, I took a deep dive into academic research on Thai television and karaoke VCD culture. These contexts explain exactly how Me and Thee—a BL series—managed to achieve the kind of nationwide viral success that most shows in the genre never reach.

This virality wasn’t an accident; it was cultural.

1. Lakorn: More Than "Just a Drama"

If you aren’t familiar with lakorn (Thai TV soaps), it’s important to realize how much they differ from what international audiences typically call a "series." Lakorns are loud, unapologetically melodramatic, and visually over-the-top. Think ear-piercing screams, dramatic slaps, intense zoom-ins, and plot twists that escalate at breakneck speed. Subtlety isn't the point—impact is.

In global terms, lakorn is closest in spirit to:

Makjang dramas (Korea)

Classic Latin American telenovelas

Indonesian sinetron

Indian TV serials

Philippine teleseryes

Turkish dizis

In Thailand, lakorn is not niche entertainment. It is prime-time, mainstream, national media, deeply woven into everyday life.

2. Lakorn as Cultural Transmission

Lakorn has roots far older than television. The word itself comes from Southeast Asian performance traditions, and its storytelling lineage can be traced back to:

Folk theatre

Court dance

Forms like likay and lakhon

Historically, these performances conveyed ideas about religion, kingship, morality, social roles, and community life. Modern lakorn inherits this function.

Academic studies of Thai television suggest that lakorn operates as a mechanism of cultural transmission. It doesn’t just entertain—it teaches:

Family structures

Respect for elders

Social harmony

Spiritual beliefs

Everyday Thai lifestyles (temple merit-making, festivals, communal living)

This is why lakorn often feels emotionally close to Thai audiences. They don’t see it as fantasy alone, but as an exaggerated mirror of lived experience.

This is also where the term “lakorn nam nao” (“polluted” or overly melodramatic soap operas) comes in. The “pollution” refers not to bad quality, but to:

Unrealistic luxury

Over-the-top acting

Intensified emotions

Yet these very traits make lakorn iconic, quotable, parody-able—and unforgettable.

3. Why Me and Thee Broke Out of BL Containment

Most BL series circulate within a relatively contained fandom space. Me and Thee didn’t—because it borrowed the visual and emotional grammar of lakorn.

Crucially, Pond Naravit’s portrayal of Thee draws directly from the archetype of the classic lakorn male lead: dramatic, intense, emotionally expressive, and visually coded in a way older audiences immediately recognize.

So even though the story is BL, it feels familiar to viewers who don’t usually watch BL. It speaks a language they already know.

4. Karaoke VCDs: The Other Half of the Puzzle

The second viral element—Pond’s One Word OST MV—makes sense only when you understand karaoke VCD culture.

Unlike in the US or Europe, VCDs were a dominant media format in Southeast Asia, especially in the 1990s and early 2000s. This is something even Gen Z Thai actors like Pond and Phuwin have mentioned: VCDs were how many children were introduced to music before they could even read properly.

Karaoke VCDs were everywhere:

Homes

Shops

Buses

Bars

Markets

Roadside stalls

Often pirated, cheaply produced, and endlessly replayed 😅

Their defining features:

On-screen lyrics

Simple visuals

Long, static shots

Warm, yellowish tones

Minimal editing

These videos weren’t meant to distract. They were functional media, designed for participation—for singing along.

5. Why Karaoke Resonates So Deeply in Thailand (and SEA)

Karaoke fits seamlessly into Thai social life because music and communal participation are central to social bonding. Singing happens at:

Family gatherings

Festivals

Local events

Casual hangouts

Thai music traditions like luk thung and mor lam emphasize emotional lyrics and storytelling. Karaoke VCDs allowed people to actively perform those emotions, not just consume them.

While there’s limited academic literature specifically on Thai karaoke VCDs, music history and regional media studies show similar patterns across Southeast Asia:

The Philippines (videoke culture, including Roberto del Rosario’s patented “Sing-Along System”)

Vietnam and Indonesia (lyric-heavy VCD-era music videos)

China, Hong Kong, Taiwan (karaoke-first MV formats)

Japan (early laserdisc karaoke)

Thailand, however, held onto this format longer, even after other markets transitioned to HD and streaming. And many luk thung and mor lam artists still intentionally recreate this aesthetic today for nostalgia.

6. The Aesthetic of Memory

That yellowish, vintage look people associate with old Thai MVs isn’t just stylistic—it’s technical:

Analog video formats (VHS, Betacam, Video8)

Tungsten lighting

Cheap cameras

No color grading

VCD compression and aging

Soap operas, commercials, and music videos all adopted this aesthetic. Eventually, it became the norm—familiar, and even comforting.

7. Why It Hit So Hard

Across lakorn and karaoke VCDs, the same cultural logic applies:

Media should feel close, not foreign

It should be emotionally explicit

It should be repeatable, quotable, singable

In the pre-streaming era, VCDs were a cultural staple. If you missed an episode, you just bought the disc. If you loved a scene, you could replay it until the player gave out. And if you wanted to sing along, the lyrics were right there on the screen.

I swear, of all the forms of cardio I've done to deliberately put myself in a triggering situation and train my vocal folds to relax, this one worked the quickest and the best. I have my theories as to why it worked so well, but I'm not a medical professional, and I couldn't find any studies online about it.